


Six Scenes From The Life Of Nicole 'Nikko' Zond

by Ankaret



Category: Veritas: The Quest
Genre: AU, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Nikko were a girl?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Scenes From The Life Of Nicole 'Nikko' Zond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Medie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/gifts).



> Many thanks to the wonderful LithiumDoll for beta-reading!

On the previous occasions when Solomon Zond had dealings with the headmistress of the exclusive Swiss boarding school, she had reminded him of the chief executive officer of a multinational corporation; calm, polished, beautifully made-up, utterly unflappable, and with a slight twinkle in her eye which showed that she was well used to dealing with acting-out on the part of daughters of widowed fathers.

Today, as she bustles in front of him up the narrow staircase to the dormitory, she is muttering to herself in _Schweizerdeutsch_, and her hand trembles visibly as she pushes open the bathroom door. "In view of this, Professor Zond," she says, pulling together the remnants of her icy composure, "I must ask you to remove Nicole from the premises at your earliest possible convenience."

Solomon casts a professional eye over the scene. He's seen less comprehensive desolation in three-thousand-year old ruins, _after_ earthquakes, volcanos and multiple generations of grave robbers. "How did she _do_ that?" he says, more to himself than to the headmistress.

The headmistress lowers her voice. "I understand she used _monthly sanitary necessities_, Professor Zond."

"Oh."

* * *

Juliet smiles over her shoulder at Solomon Zond as he shows her into the sitting-room of the suite in the Paris hotel. The room is decorated in bland pastels, and the the city skyline is sharply drawn outside the window. Solomon makes introductions, and goes off about his business. Busy man, she supposes. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day for him when he was her professor at Princeton.

Juliet supposes that, as last-minute jobs go, this one can't be all that bad. At any rate, it can't be worse than pushing a middle-aged dipsomaniac up and down the promenade at Deauville in a bath-chair and trying to keep his fifteen-year-old heir out of the casino. And besides, it's a favour for a friend.

Juliet's pupil looks her up and down with calculated insolence. She's not a pretty girl, and she hasn't inherited much from her father except her colouring, and perhaps a trick of holding her head. She has a sulky plump mouth and long thick brown hair falling in her eyes, and she slouches. She seems, for some reason, to be holding a much-washed ancient bra in one hand. Juliet decides not to ask if it's a welcome present.

"I was doing some packing," Zond's daughter mumbles, and shoves the bra behind a sofa-cushion.

Juliet does her best. "I'm just going to set you a few standardised tests, Nikki," she says. "It should take you about three hours."

"I'll have it done in forty-five minutes," says the girl in a tone of voice half defiant, half just stating the facts as she sees them. "And it's Nikko."

"Nikko? That's kind of an unusual name, isn't it?"

"My mother used to call me Nike. Like the goddess of victory, not the athletic shoes," the girl adds quickly, looking down at her own tattered Converses. "But... yeah."

Putting the topic of her mother firmly out of Juliet's reach with another challenging glance, she sits down and looks at the test booklet.

* * *

It's too hot, and Nikko squirms under the sheets, her pajamas bunching around her elbows and knees, trying to find a comfortable position. Her thoughts patter a litany of teenaged embarrassment.

_And I said - I said to him - oh God, I said - what he must think - he must think I'm a total dorkificus - oh God, oh God, oh God_.

She'd been off-balance, she told herself. It wasn't every day you got involved in a car chase through narrow Swiss streets. It wasn't every day you realised your father lived a life that was half Mission Impossible and half Indiana Jones and _hadn't bothered to tell you_. Because you were just Nikko, and you got left on top of a mountain with a bunch of empty-headed drones and stuck-up shipping heiresses whilst everyone else played with the fate of the world. Because if you were allowed to do the cool stuff you'd only screw it up.

Off-balance wasn't an excuse. Her brain - her giant crazy brain, what she'd give at this moment to be one of those rich airheads instead of Nikko Zond - played over the scene again. She hated her brain and she hated her photographic memory worse.

She hadn't wanted to meet her father's research assistant. She knew Solomon liked Cal and trusted him. He'd never _said_ that Cal was the son he'd never had, but then he didn't have to. It didn't make the daughter he actually _had_ like the prospect of meeting Calvin Banks any more.

So when they met, she said something smartassed and called him 'Chuck', because she figured it'd annoy him.

Calvin swung round in the chair. She felt her heart thump.

He was tall and bony, with dark hair and pale skin that reflected back the light of the computer screens behind him. He looked arrogant but still a tiny bit vulnerable, the kind of vulnerability Nikko had seen in just-out-of-college teachers before and knew how to exploit. He had a stupid college-boy beard.

_Think_ about the stupid beard, Nikko, she told herself. Don't think about the killer bone structure or the gorgeous coffee-dark eyes or the way you feel like there's an elevator in your stomach and it just went all the way down to the basement with the wires cut and the metal screaming.

He looked at her. She'd had one chance to make a good impression. And what had she said?

She'd said, _is my Dad Batman?_

Nikko snarls, and buries her head under the sweaty pillow.

* * *

"I want you to have this. It was Haley's," says Solomon over breakfast.

"Heirloom jewellery?" says Nikko, pushing eggs and bacon around her plate. She thinks about her mother, and revises her guess. "Heirloom lecture notes?"

She looks at the leather-bound journal in her father's hand. The sun comes through the window.

For once, they get almost to the end of breakfast without arguing.

* * *

Light filters palely through the screen walls of the dojo. Clad in sweats, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail, Nikko glares at her tormentor.

Vincent smiles back. It is one of Vincent's better smiles, somewhere between 'I know and have catalogued all the secrets of the Universe' and 'I know and have catalogued all the secrets of the Universe, _including what's under your bed_' as far as its potential for infuriating Nikko goes.

"I thought you were going to teach me the cool stuff," Nikko says. She can hear her voice turning into a whine. She tries to cover it up with bravado instead. "How to kick peoples' brains up their noses, that kind of thing."

"Some people have thicker braincases than others," says Vincent, unmoved. "Again. You _can_ balance."

Hands out to the sides, lower lip thrust out in concentration, Nikko achieves a wavering tree pose. Vincent walks around her. Without warning, he jabs out an open-palmed strike. The side of his hand comes to a stop a good quarter-inch from the skin of her face; but she still flinches back, windmills her arms and nearly falls over.

"You know," says Nikko matter-of-factly, "every time you make me do this, I visualise you wearing a day-glo headband and a leotard and a little off-the-shoulder tank top, and maybe a pair of shiny metallic pink leggings. I'm thinking of adding a tutu."

"Just because I lashed out at you doesn't mean I was going to hit you," says Vincent, doing his usual trick of answering what Nikko is thinking and not what she said. "Your goal was to maintain your balance. You failed."

"This is stupid," Nikko mutters.

"What's stupid is you behaving as if this were the first time anyone around the Veritas Foundation ever had feelings for another member of the team. How do you suppose _you_ came to be with us?"

"My mother was excavating under a gooseberry bush for the bones of a giant prehistoric stork?"

Vincent raises one eyebrow. "Solomon never mentioned it. _Again._ Or we could return to the cardiovascular exercise."

"Tutu," says Nikko under her breath.

Vincent smirks.

* * *

Calvin pushes a coffee across the table to Nikko. She grunts, tastes it, and makes a face. "We run out of soda?"

Calvin sits down opposite and cradles his own coffee in his long hands. "We need to talk about what happened on the climbing wall."

"No, we don't," Nikko mutters, hunching her head down and one shoulder up at a forty-five degree angle. "So I made a bad judgment call. Everyone screws up now and again. My father won't let me go to the Antarctic because he still thinks I'm his little princess and that's the end of it."

"Nikko, _no one_ could call you a little princess."

She looks up, suspiciously, not sure whether he's laughing at her or not. "I checked those numbers for you," she says, changing the subject.

"Yeah, thanks, because I _needed_ the numbers on that project checked by a seventeen-year-old know-it-all."

She grins at him. "You were still wrong and I was right, though."

Cal turns the cup round and round and round in his hands. "Your father won't let you go because you're not ready. This _because I'm a girl_ stuff is horse hockey. Do you think any one of us would second-guess _Maggie_ because she's got two X chromosomes instead of an X and a Y?"

Nikko dips her fingernail in the coffee and draws irresolute shapes on the table with it. Her fingernail is purple, and decorated with a silver star. "I can believe _you_ don't notice I'm a girl," she mutters finally.

Calvin takes a deep breath. "Nikko," he says finally and with restraint, "that is _not_ the problem."

"Oh, now you're taking the – "

"_Nikko_." He reaches across the table and takes her hand. She looks up at him, eyes blazing, and smudgy-dark with inexpert makeup. "You are an impossible smart-ass and you're too young for me and your father would kill me for saying this, but believe me, _I have noticed you're a girl_. The problem I have with you is that you're a girl who makes stupid decisions that could get people killed. That could get _you_ killed. You should have given me your safety line."

Nikko looks like the world has just ended with a loud bang right behind her left ear, but she manages a brave half-a-smirk. "You're asking me for my safety line?"

"I'm saying that on that occasion, you should have handed it over to me, yes."

"I'll give you mine if you give me yours."

His hand tightens around hers. She can feel the heat of his skin, the pulse hammering in his veins.

"You're not even my type," he says.

"What _is_ your type? Inflatable?"

Cal shakes his head. "_Nikko_."

"Your type is me?"

"My type is older. Sophisticated. Preferably blonde." His thumb strokes the skin of Nikko's palm, and stops suddenly, as if he's touched something forbidden. "With at least one advanced degree."

"I could have an advanced degree."

"You don't even have a high school diploma."

Nikko knows he's waiting for her to say _that's because I'm seventeen_. She doesn't say it. Cal might have forgotten it in the heat of the moment, but she's the girl who plays Vincent and her father at chess. Money games. She wins often enough that Vincent does not yet own her college fund.

She lowers her eyelashes, and looks across the table at Cal. _Killer_ bone structure, yes, you could cut your hand on those cheekbones. You could get lost for hours in the wideness of those shoulders.

"If I can talk my father into letting me go to Antarctica," she says, and pauses artfully with a little look up under her lashes, "maybe we can share a sleeping bag."

"I told you, you're too young. And not my type. And Solomon would eviscerate me."

"Yeah, you told me that already, Chuck," she says, and doesn't let go of his hand.


End file.
